Love, challenges, and diplomacy: An Indian woman's journey in Islamabad

ANINDIANWOMAN INISLAMABAD: 1997-2000

Author: Ruchi  Ghanashyam

Publisher: Penguin

Pages:229

Price: Rs 699

  It takes courage for an Indian, especially a woman, to agree to take up the post of a diplomat in Pakistan. Ruchi Ghanashyam was the first Indian woman diplomat stationed in Islamabad, along with her husband, A R Ghanashyam. As was expected, the journey was not exactly smooth sailing. During their tenure from 1997 to 2000, the couple was witness to turbulent events that strained relations, such as the India-Pakistan nuclear tests, the Kargil war and the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814.

 

In her book, Ms Ghanashyam provides a first-hand perspective of her experiences in these three years as an Indian woman living in “enemy country”. Over the course of the book, she attempts to analyse the love-hate relationship between the two countries. She peppers the prose with many interesting stories and anecdotes of the local people she encountered and the conversations she had with them. Along the way, she also describes various tourist places in the country that she visited during her stay, such as Taxila, Panja Sahib, Rawalpindi, Murree, Lahore, Karachi, Mohenjo-daro, Swat Valley and Peshawar.

 

At the outset, Ms Ghanashyam says living in Islamabad was not easy. The family had no privacy, and Pakistani intelligence agents had been tailing them from the day they had arrived in the city. Constantly under surveillance, they had to contend with the fact that their house and telephone were bugged. In scenes reminiscent of the movies, they would often discover someone eerily following them while they were shopping or moving around. Ms Ghanashyam even jokes that they sometimes felt like James Bond. Further, the agencies would periodically try different tactics, such as aggressive driving, to  intimidate them on the road.

 

“A nagging sense of anxiety and insecurity was a part of our daily lives,” she writes. Unsurprisingly, the couple’s two young boys were also deeply affected by the experience of living in Islamabad. Ironically, the American Embassy Club was the only place in the city where the family felt like “normal people, living normal lives,” Ms Ghanashyam writes. Moreover, the town itself offered little diversion. To travel out of city limits required official permission, which wasn’t always forthcoming.

 

Given that Pakistani markets are filled with varieties of fabrics and that there are extremely talented tailors and designers in Islamabad, most foreign women would keep themselves busy getting salwar-kameezes tailored or shopping for clothes, jewellery and Afghan carpets. Ms Ghanashyam found that, while Pakistani handicrafts, designer outfits and dress materials were much sought after in India, Indian brocade and Banarasi silk suits and sarees as well as Indian wedding jewellery were very popular in Pakistan. In another instance, she once heard a song from the popular Bollywood film Border being played on a loudspeaker at a street corner. Even though the patriotic Indian film was banned in Pakistan, Ms Ghanashyam realised that it was easy to find DVDs of Indian movies at rental shops.

 

In her observations about Pakistani society, Ms Ghanashyam explains that segregation of men and women is common even in diplomatic gatherings. Young women belonging to minorities are especially vulnerable to forced conversions and marriages as well as human trafficking, with almost no justice available. In the chapter “Being a Woman in Islamabad”, she writes that many women in their 40s would be apprehensive because men would often find a younger wife. In such a male chauvinistic culture, Ms Ghanashyam cites examples of empowered Pakistani women like human rights lawyer and social activist Asma Jahangir and her sister Hina Jilani, who went on to become passionate defenders of human rights, especially those of women, persecuted minorities and children.

 

Possibly the most impactful incident in the book is Ms Ghanashyam’s husband’s visit to Kandahar after the hijacked flight IC 814 landed there in December 1999. The government had ordered him to be sent to Kandahar to communicate with the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit that had hijacked the plane. At that point, the responsibility of all the lives in the aircraft suddenly fell on his shoulders. With no certainty of what lay ahead, he decided to chronologically record each development of the extraordinary event in his notebook —a somewhat thrilling saga that he recounts himself in one of the chapters. Though it has been 25 years since the incident, with mercifully no hijack of an Indian aircraft ever since, he writes that there have been many learnings from it. “In the neighbourhood we live in, India can let its guard down only at its peril,” he warns.

 

Despite all the odds, Ms Ghanashyam focuses on the positives, and shares that some of their friendships from Islamabad have lasted for over two decades. She mentions her friendship with various members of the country’s liberal society, including lawyer Raza Kazim and human rights activist and columnist A Milani. In the chapter “Love across the Border”, she shares one of the many love stories that have existed between an Indian and a Pakistani. The young couple in question belonged to well-to-do families and amid much anxiety from their parents on either side of the border, Ms Ghanashyam became a bridge to help give them a happily-ever-after ending. Through the book, she also relates many heart-warming instances with landlords, tailors, doctors and shopkeepers. “With so much similarity at the people-to-people level, the distance between the establishments sometimes caused us a twinge of sadness,” she concludes.

 

The reviewer is a freelance writer based in New Delhi. She writes on books, art, culture, travel, music and theatre